Wrong Way Corrigan, the Curtiss Robin Called Sunshine, and the Twenty-Eight Hours Nobody Could Prove Were an Accident

On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on a filed flight plan to California, turned east, and landed at Baldonnel Aerodrome in Dublin, Ireland 28 hours and 13 minutes later. His explanation: the compass was old, the fuel tanks blocked the instrument panel, and he simply flew the wrong way. Nobody believed him. Nobody could prove he lied.

Who Was Douglas Corrigan Before the Flight?

Corrigan was not an unknown. By 1938 he had spent nearly a decade pursuing a transatlantic crossing - and his most credible credential was this: he helped build the Spirit of St. Louis. As a welder and mechanic on Lindbergh’s aircraft, he fabricated the fuel tanks and knew every rivet in the fuselage.

In May 1927, Corrigan was 20 years old, standing on the ground at Long Island, watching Lindbergh lift off and become the most famous man alive. He decided immediately he would do the same thing.

What Was the Curtiss Robin “Sunshine”?

In 1935, Corrigan bought a 1929 Curtiss Robin monoplane for $110. The Robin was a practical, unremarkable high-wing design - popular with farmers and flight schools, not ocean crossings. Corrigan named it Sunshine and spent years turning it into something else entirely.

He rebuilt the Wright nine-cylinder radial engine himself. He added fuel tanks throughout the cabin until total capacity reached approximately 320 gallons. The main cabin tank was so large that the pilot essentially sat behind a wall of aviation fuel. One seam dripped slowly; Corrigan considered it acceptable. The instrument panel was partially blocked by the tanks - to read the compass, he had to lean sideways and crane his neck around the obstruction.

That detail became the centerpiece of his alibi.

How Did the CAA Respond to His Transatlantic Applications?

Corrigan applied to the Civil Aeronautics Authority for transatlantic crossing authorization. The CAA grounded the aircraft, issued a list of required fixes, and said no. He fixed every item and applied again. They said no again. He applied a third time. No again.

The CAA’s position was defensible. The transatlantic route had killed roughly a dozen pilots in the decade since Lindbergh. A $110 Curtiss Robin with improvised fuel tanks was not what the agency wanted to authorize.

So Corrigan filed a flight plan for California.

What Happened on July 17, 1938?

Corrigan lined up on the runway at 5:15 AM, shoved the throttle forward, and used nearly every foot of pavement getting his overloaded aircraft airborne. The wheels cleared the boundary fence by five to ten feet. He climbed into low overcast and disappeared from view within the first hour.

He turned east.

Twenty-eight hours and thirteen minutes later, he touched down in Dublin. He climbed out of the cockpit, walked up to the nearest person, and delivered the line that has been repeated in every hangar in America since:

“Just got in from New York. Where am I?”

Told he was in Dublin, Ireland, Corrigan reportedly said: “I flew the wrong way.”

Why Didn’t Anyone Believe the Compass Story?

Dublin is approximately 3,800 miles from New York. California is roughly 2,800 miles - in the opposite direction. Twenty-eight hours is a long time to maintain a wrong heading. The North Atlantic does not look like the Pacific. The sun still rises in the east regardless of cloud cover.

His explanation held that the compass was obstructed by the fuel tanks, that he became disoriented in the early overcast, and that once he broke into clear sky over open ocean he assumed he was over the Pacific and pressed on. It was just plausible enough to be unverifiable.

Earlier that same July, Corrigan had completed a cross-country round trip between California and New York to demonstrate the aircraft’s range and reliability. He knew the routing. He had fuel for a transatlantic crossing. He had studied the North Atlantic for years. And he had an alibi simple enough to maintain under decades of scrutiny.

What Did the CAA Do After the Flight?

The CAA suspended Corrigan’s pilot certificate for 14 days. It was the time it took him to sail home from Ireland by ship. When the gangway touched the dock in New York, his certificate was valid and he stepped off the boat legally cleared to fly.

The timing was not accidental. He had worked it out in advance.

How Did New York Receive Him?

New York gave Corrigan a ticker-tape parade. Crowds, newsreel cameras, photographers. He stood on the running board of an open car and waved, grinning the grin of a man who had gotten away with something spectacular in broad daylight.

He wrote a book - That’s My Story - and maintained the compass explanation in every chapter, through every interview, for the next 50 years. He flew airshows. He ferried aircraft during the war years. He kept flying. He was not particularly interested in being a folk hero; he was interested in being a pilot.

Douglas Corrigan died in December 1995 at the age of 88, and as far as anyone has documented, he never once cracked.

Why This Flight Still Matters

The Sunshine crossing was technically serious work. Corrigan flew using basic compass heading, airspeed, and dead reckoning across approximately 3,800 miles of open ocean, held lower altitudes to avoid weather, and arrived with a marginal fuel reserve. The Wright radial ran without a miss for the entire 28-hour flight. Whatever the true story of his intentions, the man executed an overwater crossing in a modified $110 monoplane that most aviation authorities had told him couldn’t do it.

The sequence - denied three times, filed an alternate plan, turned east, maintained the same story for half a century - sits in a particular category of aviation legend. The bureaucracy said no. He found a different door.

Key Takeaways

Douglas Corrigan flew a 1929 Curtiss Robin from New York to Dublin on July 17, 1938, completing the crossing in 28 hours and 13 minutes despite having been denied transatlantic authorization three times by the CAA
The aircraft, named Sunshine, cost $110 and carried approximately 320 gallons of fuel after years of modifications; a fuel tank partially blocked the compass - the core of Corrigan’s “wrong way” alibi
Corrigan had worked under Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis as the mechanic who fabricated its fuel tanks, and watched Lindbergh depart for Paris in 1927 at age 20
The CAA suspended his certificate for 14 days - precisely the sailing time from Dublin to New York - meaning he stepped off the ship legally cleared to fly
Corrigan maintained the compass story without deviation until his death in December 1995, and the aviation community never officially resolved whether it was true

Sources: National Air and Space Museum archives; Terry Gwynn-Jones on golden age long-distance pilots; Douglas Corrigan, “That’s My Story.”